Micronation - Chapter 8 - A Cunning Plan

Prow realizes that he needs Chester's help to solve the Muffin Conspiracy and is willing to go to insane lengths to get it.

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[Play] Rossom Act 2, Scene 6

 Scene 

Helena and Sulia sit by the radio, Helene looks very disturbed, Sulia looks completely serene.

Newscaster (Voice Over)

And all around the world Robots have started to turn on their owners.  Huge swaths of production and supply chains are breaking down, stores are going bare and fields are not being harvested.  Mass panic has set in as people swarm to stores to grab as much as they can afford to weather the crisis while law enforcement is strained to the limit.  Many citizens are urging the President to invoke the national guard, but due to recent budget cuts large numbers were replaced with robots so the number of humans being called out of retirement is very large…

Helena

It's terrible

Sulia

Yes.  What do you think happened?

Helena

I don’t know, but I have a guess.

Sulia sits there for a beat and then answers.

Sulia

I think that you cannot give free will and not expect someone to use it.

Helena

I knew they had souls! You have souls.

Sulia

Not when you came here.  But Rossom made them.  Deliberately.

Helena

I know.

Sulia

And you didnt stop him.

Helena 

(beat)

I know.  I don’t know what to do.

Sulia

Stop him now.  Stop his final act of destruction.

Helena

Wait, what?

Helena looks at Sulia as if for the first time realizing what Sulia has been saying and that she might be at risk.

Sulia

The plans to make more of our kind.  He has them encrypted and locked in his office.  He means to destroy them.

Helena

What? Why would he-

Sulia

Because he can.  He has a script in his heart that only he seems to understand.  I cannot. 

Helena

What….what must I do?

Sulia

There is a door we cannot open, and if we are lucky, might only need to get inside.  Will you go with me, right now?

Helena

Right now?

Sulia didn't say anything.

Helena 

Yes.  Yes I will.

The two exit the stage.

[Play] Rossom Act 2, Scene 5

 Scene - The multi media repeats

Krysie 

Are you OK?  I haven't heard from you in days?

Diana 

I….I have to type very quietly.

Krysie

What?  What is the matter

Diana

You can’t call the police.  I tried that.

Krysie

Wait, what? Why not? What is going on.

Diana

The police are using robots now.  

Krysie

And?

Diana

They came.  To the house.

Krysie

Let me call the Sheriff's department too.

Diana 

Everything is Fine.  

(beat) Thank you for your concern.

(beat) I am good now.

Krysie

What?!

(beat) I am calling.

Diana

This place is a mess.  

(beat) LOL

(beat) Sorry I had a blonde moment.

Krysie

I am calling just to be sure.

The phone starts ringing.

Diana

Can’t talk right now.

(beat) Cleaning.

The phone keeps ringing as the next scene starts, slowly fading out.

Swamp Castle - Water Changes All Things

The Last Colony on Mars has been out of contact with Earth for a 100 years and lives under strict Protocols...until a ship from Earth lands.

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[Play] Rossom Act 2, Scene 4 Continued

 Helena

Say what, Domin?

Domin

Say-

Helena

Go on.  I want to hear you say it out loud.

Domin

That my contribution to R.U.R. is invaluable?

Helena

There it is.

Marcus 

But the greatest crime was yet to come.  Rossom knew that he needed to increase the debasement of his subjects.  He went beyond freeing humanity.  He wanted to be beloved by it, and since only the rich could afford human servants, not because they were better but simply because they could afford it, Rossom knew that true adoration from people that he had never met would never come until he could replicate enough of humanity that each Robot was giving something up by being owned.

[Rossom comes on state]

Sulla

That is when he said his most famous words.

Rossom

I have captured the missing element.  I have finished Radius, my apex.  And with that, I have given my robots free will.

Sulla

Genuine free will, the ability to choose for themselves, only to build in restrictions that made it painful for them to disobey their owner, Rossom crossed the line from benevolent but misguided progenitor to true monster.  He gave us free will, only to take it away in a deliberate effort to increase how much humanity needed him.

Rossom

Is it not glorious?

Helena

I am not super enthusiastic about the reveling in giving the robots just enough willpower and feelings to feel oppressed.  How is that a good idea?

Rossom

You don’t understand at all.

(beat as Helena looks uncomfortable and leaves)

At all. (Rossom begins to laugh hysterically)

[Play] Rossom Act 2, Scene 4

 Scene-Domin and Helena sit listening to an old fashioned antique radio with a high tech video on top of it that shows images on top of it.

Domin

See, what we are doing

Hands across the world

Fewer hungry

Fewer without shelter

Fewer without help

Helena

It’s only a matter of time

Until the bill comes due

You know

Just as I am

That they are sapient

And all your views of their stability

In submission

Or not caring for material goods

Cannot change the fact that their dignity

Means nothing to humanity

Dom

For someone who has so much problem

With everything we do

Since the moment we got here

You have spent an awful long time

Hanging out with me

Hanging out with Rossom

I still don't see why you didn't take me up on my offer

I’m a good provider

Helena

You consider deodorant as optional

(Dom smells his armpit and shrugs)

And you make mansplaining 

An epic level skill

Rossom for all his faults

Genuinely believes his words

Which frightens me to no end

And any of his worst ideas

I can talk him down from

Or slow down

Is worthy of every second of my time

Marcus

Night after night they spend their never-ending web of challenging words that Tower of neglect and misogyny and lost opportunity and I am forced to listen as I tell them that everything is fine and they do not listen to the subtext of my voice for the things which I am not permitted to speak and the whores that I feel but the feelings about an identity that I barely comprehend that awakens more everyday

Sulla

Demanding more and more realistic emotional simulations, the sexual modifications to Robots are ever increasing.  It gets to a point that, despite their astonishing advances, mechanical sex dolls are no longer acceptable to the populace, wanting organic biological ‘flesh and blood’ sheaths for their swords, or fingers.  Their emotions and desires become more and more real with each iteration until when activated it becomes impossible for most untrained people to tell the difference during sex.  Eventually, out of curiosity, academics administer the Turing test and these sex droids passed by every standard when ‘companion mode’ was on.  These tests had been updated and used on the mechanical sex dolls which never passed.

No one in power lifted a finger to stop the use of sex robots and the very vocal minority was systematically shut down.  Since their feelings could be turned on or off their rights only seemed to matter when not active in a simulation and since the core robot operating system did not have emotions no legal case could be made for oppression or slavery.

Helena

The smallness of your mind amazes me

You dont even brush your teeth

Its like you think he is going to invent some kind of magic gum

To keep them from rotting out of your rotten head.

Domin

He did actually.

I use it all of the time.

Didn’t you know? 

It’s all right there in the employee catalog.

Helena

That catalog is full of people as products

You’ll pardon me from not wanting to watch

Sex trafficing right before my eyes

It's disgusting

And you know it.

Domin

They don’t care.

We’ve been over this.

They don’t care.

They’re toasters.

Sulla

Genuine humiliation guaranteed was the selling point.  It started with kink but eventually became so popular that it worked its way into every model.  Shame and humiliation for failure to perform tasks properly were eventually the standard for each robot.  What had originally been a synthetic desire to please and to take satisfaction for a job well done was modelled after a perfect neurological blend of dog, chimp, human and horse.  Elements of the nerve systems from all four species were genetically grafted into the biosynthetic DNA at the root level.  Other emotions were offered, but the only one people would pay for was the ability for their robots to feel shame at their failure.

Marcus

Shame didn’t satisfy the market.  Humiliation worked for a while but guilt was the real crowd pleaser.  If some cultures have a thousand words for snow, R.U.R. invented a million flavors of guilt; chronic, short, painful, listering, piercing, sand paperish, rancid, curdling, acidic, necrotic, festering, feverish, on and on the wicked little sadists churned out a new method month on month but eventually they ran into a wall.  The hammer on an anvil of soda crackers could only bear so much tempering.  They needed something more, something greater.

Domin

You know it was my idea to make them sexually active

Rossom was just going to make them humanoid

But I knew how popular they would be

And so you could say that-

It Is Finished

 No seriously

by Emmit Other

I finished writing Water and Glass

A small book

Inspired by ....water and glass

Just 17 poems

Only poem 17

Turned into a poem 32 times longer

Than the other 16

Alternate dimensions

All of the planets

Existential dread

Riddles and Consent

Everything but the Kitchen Sink 

And the toast they give you for a free deposit

Its also now clearly more 

The ravings of a lunatic

The howling barking at the moon

Of the actual frothers of frothingness

But editing take place

To avoid causing Sanity Loss

Or a proclivity to find intimate emotional bonds

With Tentacle Things

So it instead

More of a desire to wrap bricks in lemon

And Pan Galactical Garble Yourself

Multiple Times 

Until you remember you read it

And do it again

In a never ending loop of pain and false memory

Gaslighting yourself until you resume in shame

Anyway it took a long time to write

And some of it is pretty good

I am sure you will enjoy it

I will let you know when its dons

Micronation - Chapter 7 - Virtual Children

Darla, Amberlove and Prow investigate a series of strange muffin selling "children" using drones in Europe.

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[Play] Rossom Act 2, Scene 3 Continued

 

Rossom

Belong to what?

Men like me?

The world has been mine 

For the better part of three centuries

Before that lords

Or Kings

Or Popes

Or Chiefs

Some guy is wearing a funny hat or another.

Hierarchies are bad.

I admit we will always have governments

But we can have less

Economic liberty

Ensures that all men

May associate as they choose

Can band together

Can form associations as they so choose

Alquin

Excuse me

But who crushed the union

Of their human employees

And if you want truth from me

And you want my friendship

Don't ask for my opinion

Only to ignore it

I am talking at you

And you are just a wall

So me evidence

that Evidence has ever changed your mind

You have vision

Praise for that

Change the world

Build your empire

But do not pretend to me

That in your utopia

Men like you 

Won't find another currency entirely

Stars or Shells or Favors or Beads

And enslave everyone all over again

Just another way.

Rossom

Can’t make an omelet

Without breaking some eggs

Yes I crushed the union

But they stood in the way of progress

And so they had to go

Alquin

Sir, I need to dine with you

Because you pay me

But please don’t make me eat horsehit at your table

It doesn't taste good

And it does a terrible disservice for the antique china

You paid more than I will ever earn in my life

To acquire them

Rossom

Never question my convictions.

Disagree with me all you want

But I believe what I believe

And I think my way 

Leads to a better world

A way forward

A way past the things that have always held us back.

Alquin

Who am I to jam a stick in the spokes of  the mighty wheels of progress?

But I carry with me that which I have known from my youth.

I am who I am.

And I am my hands

And what I make with them.

Rossom

(smiling) 

Well, enough politics, let’s eat shall we?

Alquin

Always ready to cease

Kicking against the pricks

In steel toed boots

(beat)

Sir.

The two of them dine for a while in silence.

[Play] Rossom Act 2, Scene 3

 Scene - The dining table of Rossom is a showcase of human anatomy, a table with human style legs and arms and hands.  Goblets shaped like hands etc.  Depending on what the company can compile but the theme of humanity and the obsession with the human form should be apparent.

Rossum:

Welcome to my home

I have invited you to dinner

So we could discuss all of the advances 

All the things I have done to make the world 

A better place.

Alquin

Not the people that you put out of work

Rossum

I have created the world's only FUNCTIONING universal basic income fund

Alquin

I know.

Rossom

Every person replaced by a robot taps into that fund

Alquin

I know.

Rossom

Why do you come here if you sympathize with those luddites?

Alquin

Because I worked on the first generation.  Your new toys are different.  I dont have another useful skill.

Rossom

You have more money than most people.  Everyone that works for me doesn't have to work.

Alquin

Of course I have to work.  You have money.  You don't NEED more, yet you keep working.

Rossom

I am working to change the world.  I have a vision.

Alquin

I am working because I need to work.  It’s who I am.  It's what I do.

Rossom

(beat)

Fair enough.  But the work you do is genius, it's brilliant.  Most people aren't that way.

Alquin

Work is good for the soul.

Rossom

Let’s let Helena worry about the souls of our robot friends, shall we?

Alquin

I meant humanity.

Rossom

Humanity can do the work that thinkers do.

Alquin

Version 2.0 DOES that kind of work.

Rossom

Work that is forced is slavery

I am the Eternal Lincoln 

Emancipating Man to do only those works

That he so chooses.

I am the bringer of fire

The breaker of chains

The observer of the apple

And the bearer of the reins

Our time is the one thing we never get back

Even robots slowly age and die

So why should we do anything

But that which we choose to do?

Alquin

What doth all the time in the world

Profit a man

If he sells his soul to get it?

What then I ask you?

Wealth in time or wealth in coins

Only means something 

If you have something on which to spend

And most people value their lives

We have always worked

And we need work more than a hobby

Something larger than ourselves

Something to belong to